A Critical Conversation on Climate Change ... - Green Choices

offsets – the fossil economy’s new arena of conflict 235Table 6. Penalty amounts in relation to paid and offered amountsSource: PROFAFOR Forestation ContractsCommunitiesAmounts initiallyoffered(USD)Amountsdisbursed tocommunityAmountsof penaltyclausePenalty/disbursementratioCaguanapamba n.a. $15,716 $42,660 271%San Sebastián de SigSig $75 ,600 $38,800 $108,000 278%Pisambilla $49,500 $27,000 $81,000 300%Mojandita Avelino Dávila $21, 450 $11,700 $35,100 300%In practice, however, Condoy is right, since even contracts involvingcommon property are subject to penalty clauses and fines in the eventof a breach, and PROFAFOR is well able to enforce mortgage-likearrangements by taking advantage of the inter-ethnic power relationsthat are a legacy of the colonial era in the region.In one community, Caguanapamba, where the leaders who had signedthe contract mismanaged the PROFAFOR funds they were entrustedwith, community members did not get paid for the first plantingoperation and many seedlings were lost. The leader who succeededthem will now have to use the last instalment of funding in order topay off the people who did the original planting. To complete thefirebreak, he has had to rent a machine with community funds andrely on labour from minga.All right, I can see that things haven’t all gone according to plan with carbonsinks in the Andes. But so what? Can you draw any general conclusions fromall this?Carbon trading theory says that Southern countries have a hithertounrecognised and unpriced resource in the form of spare or unusedcarbon-absorbing potential. By bringing this dormant, unexploitedresource into something called ‘the market’, the theory goes,the South will be able to transform it into living capital or exchangeit for cash or other things, adding to its wealth and to that of worldsociety as a whole.Over hundreds of square kilometres of the Ecuadorian Andes, newtransactions involving carbon are indeed being made. But for themost part, they are not textbook ‘market’ transactions, nor do theyaddress climate change, nor have they resulted in communities’ realisingnew value from formerly unused assets.Instead, common land, community labour and much of the paltry